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Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... Amity Public Library | FIC COOKSON | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Salem Main Library | Cookson, C. | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
Catherine Cookson was one of the world's most beloved writers. Her books have sold millions of copies, and her characters and their stories have captured the imaginations of readers around the globe. Now, available for the first time in this country, comes one of Cookson's earliest and most stirring historical romances: The Fifteen Streets. John O'Brien lives in a world where surviving is a continual struggle. He works long hours at the docks to help support his parents' large family. Many other families in the Fifteen Streets have already given up and descended into a dismal state of grinding poverty, but the O'Briens continue to strive for a world they are only rarely allowed to glimpse. Then John O'Brien meets Mary Llewellyn, a beautiful young teacher who belongs to that other world. What begins as a casual conversation over tea quickly blossoms into a rare love that should have been perfect. Fate steps in, however, when John is accused of fathering the child of a local girl, and Mary's parents forbid her to see him. The couple begins to realize that the gulf of the Fifteen Streets between them is a chasm they could never bridge-or might they still find a way? In these pages Catherine Cookson displays the irresistible plotting, scene-setting, and characterization that have made her a recognized master of historical and romance fiction. Fans of her novels, with their larger themes of romantic love and class conflict, will be delighted to find that even at the beginning of her illustrious career, Cookson had the power to captivate audiences. Filled with passion and compelling drama, The Fifteen Streets is a rare treat for lovers of romantic fiction.
Author Notes
Catherine Cookson, 1906 - 1998 British writer Catherine Cookson was born in Tyne Dock, Co. Durham. She was born illegitimate and into poverty with a mother who was, at times, an alcoholic and violent. From the age of thirteen, Catherine suffered from hereditary hemorrhage telangiectasia. She also believed, for many years, that she was abandoned as a baby and that her mother was actually her older sister.
Catherine wrote her first short story, "The Wild Irish Girl," at the age of eleven and sent it to the South Shields Gazette, which sent it back in three days. She left school at the age of thirteen to work as a maid for the rich and powerful. It was then that she saw the great class barrier inside their society. From working in a laundry, she saved enough money to open an apartment hotel in Hastings. Schoolmaster, Tom Cookson, was one of her tenants and became her husband in 1940. She suffered several miscarriages and became depressed so she began writing to help her recovery.
Catherine has written over ninety novels and, under the pseudonym of Catherine Marchant, she wrote three different series of books, which included the Bill Bailey, the Mary Ann, and the Mallen series. Her first book, "Kate Hannigan" (1950), tells the partly autobiographical story of a working-class girl becoming pregnant by an upper-middle class man. The baby is raised by Kate's parents and the child believes them to be her real parents and that Kate is her sister. Many of her novels are set in 19th century England and tell of poverty in such settings as mines, shipyards and farms. Her characters usually cross the class barrier by means of education.
Catherine received the Freedom of the Borough of South Shields and the Royal Society of Literature's award for the Best Regional Novel of the year. The Variety Club of Great Britain named her Writer of the Year and she was voted Personality of the North-East. She received an honorary degree from the University of Newcastle and was made Dame in 1933.
Just shortly before her ninety-second birthday, on June 11, 1998, Catherine died in her home near Newcastle-upon-Tyne. "Kate Hannigan's Girl" (1999), was published posthumously and continues the story of her first novel.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
British readers have been familiar with this early novel by Cookson for five decades, but this reissue will please American fans who crave the late author's sudsy historical novels. John O'Brien, born in the Tyneside area of Northumberland called the "fifteen streets," is caught up in the vicious circle of poverty, drink and deeper poverty endured by the residents of this slum district. He works as a laborer on the docks, trying to add to the family's precarious finances, keep his mother and sisters safe from his drunken father and brutal brother and protect them from the religious violence that often roils the largely Irish Catholic neighborhood. John thinks only sporadically about a better life until a non-Catholic family moves nearby. The kindly Brackens, who preach spiritual healing, are feared and persecuted in the neighborhood, even by John's own family, but they persevere in their message of tolerance and intellectual empowerment, and open John's eyes to a different way of thinking and believing in God. At the same time, John meets his sister's beloved young teacher, Mary Llewellyn, who opens not only his eyes but his heart. Their love affair is scandalous, since Mary is the daughter of a prosperous shipbuilder. Slander, violence and death take their toll before the lovers tentatively plan a new life together. Cookson's strong and touching characterizations and atmospheric setting carry this narrative, which dramatizes the cruel legacies of religious bigotry and the rigid British class system. (Dec.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
First US publication of a 1952 novel by the late Dame Catherine-and a good one: Cain and Abel on the Tyneside docks. Young and strapping John O'Brien has a romantic heart and a poetic way, though all that's no use as he looks for work unloading freighters. His mother, Mary Ellen, is pregnant once more, with many mouths to feed already. Devout Catholics, the family is frightened by the Protestant spiritualists who move into the flat above, determined to help the afflicted-and the old man and his granddaughter Christine do somehow save Mary Ellen from a childbirth end, though her newborn dies. Healed, she struggles on against soul-destroying poverty, not helped much by husband Shane, an alcoholic who suffers from tremors. But Shane can still knock down his other son, Dominic, a violent, almost fiendish brute who spends his pay on drink and whores. Meanwhile, good son John adores younger sister Katie, a shy and studious lass, and believes in her dream of becoming a teacher someday-didn't Miss Llewellyn say she could do it? Mary Llewellyn is a teacher herself, a vision of elegance and breeding to this rough lot, the daughter of an erstwhile dockworker who's now a respected boat-builder with his own yard, while her mother, a sharp-tongued social climber, is aghast to see her daughter keep company with John. She's not the only one: Dominic erupts with jealous rage when John becomes a gaffer who hires and oversees the dockworkers. First, Dominic beguiles a simple-minded girl and gets her pregnant, then starts scurrilous rumors that John's the culprit. When he sets Kate and Christine adrift on a boat, all of Tyneside sees the girls drown. Knowing he'll never have his Mary now, John hunts his evil brother from house to house, bent on a terrible revenge. Cookson (The Lady on My Left , p. 1413) bestows an emotional grandeur on the circumscribed lives of her working-class characters, and her vividly written tale has real power.
Table of Contents
| 1 The Brothers | p. 1 |
| 2 A Day of Bonny Lasses | p. 25 |
| 3 St Patrick's Day | p. 45 |
| 4 The Conflict | p. 59 |
| 5 The Comic | p. 79 |
| 6 The Visit | p. 91 |
| 7 Christmas Eve | p. 109 |
| 8 New Year's Eve | p. 135 |
| 9 Nancy | p. 155 |
| 10 Mary Llewellyn | p. 171 |
| 11 Ask and Ye Shall Receive | p. 181 |
| 12 The Aftermath | p. 199 |
| 13 Renunciation | p. 219 |
| 14 Whither Thou Goest | p. 231 |